Being “good with computers” had different implications when it comes to presentation design over the years. From my experience as a management consultant:
- Pre 1995: professional graphics designers produced your slides, you could simply sketch ideas on a piece of paper. As a junior analyst you marvelled at how senior partners seem to be shaking new frameworks out of their pencil with zero effort
- 2000: if you demonstrated that you understood PowerPoint, you were instantly designated the entire team’s graphics designer, but only during out of office hours (18:00 to 09:00, and weekends)
- 2005: Everyone starts to produce their own charts, and being proficient in PowerPoint could actually give you an edge. Including images, even videos, complex data charts.
- Today: technical proficiency is no longer required, as more and more people understand that the best slides are really simple slides.
Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash